Childhood Influences in Great Expectations and the Kite Runner
Michael Dennedy - Word Count : 1944
How do Dickens and Hosseini present the influence of childhood experiences in their novels ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘The Kite Runner’?
The influence of childhood experience is at the core of these novels as both of the main protagonists go through a rite of passage and change of character which is influenced by their contrasting childhood experiences.
In Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’, the main character Pip grew up in southeast England with his harsh and blunt sister Mrs. Joe who raised him forcefully and often violently ‘by hand’ and her kind and loving husband Joe Gargery who is what many critics such as E.M Forster call “a flat character” as his personality and motives do not change throughout the novel. Despite later feeling that blacksmithing is below him, in the Victorian era, Pip would have been very lucky to have had an automatic apprenticeship due to Joe’s profession. In my opinion, two major events in Pip’s childhood affect him for the rest of his life: his fateful and terrifying meeting with the convict Magwitch, and his embarrassing and revelatory meeting with Miss. Havisham and Estella.
The first life-changing event for Pip is when ‘a fearful man… with a great iron on his leg’ named Magwitch approaches him in the graveyard where our protagonist’s parents lay. The Wordsworth Classics edition of the novel offers an illustration in chapter one by F.W Pailthorpe is provided which connotes that Magwitch is dark and frightful, although the illustrator used irony here as the criminal stands behind a gravestone which reads ’Sacred’; in my opinion this gravestone represents Magwitch’s true kind hearted nature. In these first chapters, we are introduced to the character of Pip who is the most important in the novel due to him being both narrator and protagonist. Despite his horror at meeting such a fearsome man, he is kind and compassionate towards him, instantly showing that Pip is overtly, a ‘good’ character. This
How do Dickens and Hosseini present the influence of childhood experiences in their novels ‘Great Expectations’ and ‘The Kite Runner’?
The influence of childhood experience is at the core of these novels as both of the main protagonists go through a rite of passage and change of character which is influenced by their contrasting childhood experiences.
In Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’, the main character Pip grew up in southeast England with his harsh and blunt sister Mrs. Joe who raised him forcefully and often violently ‘by hand’ and her kind and loving husband Joe Gargery who is what many critics such as E.M Forster call “a flat character” as his personality and motives do not change throughout the novel. Despite later feeling that blacksmithing is below him, in the Victorian era, Pip would have been very lucky to have had an automatic apprenticeship due to Joe’s profession. In my opinion, two major events in Pip’s childhood affect him for the rest of his life: his fateful and terrifying meeting with the convict Magwitch, and his embarrassing and revelatory meeting with Miss. Havisham and Estella.
The first life-changing event for Pip is when ‘a fearful man… with a great iron on his leg’ named Magwitch approaches him in the graveyard where our protagonist’s parents lay. The Wordsworth Classics edition of the novel offers an illustration in chapter one by F.W Pailthorpe is provided which connotes that Magwitch is dark and frightful, although the illustrator used irony here as the criminal stands behind a gravestone which reads ’Sacred’; in my opinion this gravestone represents Magwitch’s true kind hearted nature. In these first chapters, we are introduced to the character of Pip who is the most important in the novel due to him being both narrator and protagonist. Despite his horror at meeting such a fearsome man, he is kind and compassionate towards him, instantly showing that Pip is overtly, a ‘good’ character. This